


Closed Doors, Open Windows

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Constipation, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: The couch at someone else's apartment is not an extended stay hotel. Mingyu wishes Joshua would understand this.





	Closed Doors, Open Windows

**Author's Note:**

> prompt inspired by a dream had by my good friend ao3 user traceleft (gaslight)! thank you for letting me thieve your intellectual property!

Mingyu is in the middle of an episode of _Family Feud_ when he hears a knock on the door. Partly, it seems like a blessing. He doesn’t really like _Family Feud_ , but he’s reached that point of despair roaming the channels where he’s given up completely on trying to finding something he actually does want to watch, so he’s been suffering through it now for almost two hours. A knock at the door sounds like a very promising distraction.

In another vein, though, a knock at the door doesn’t always mean good news. Given that it’s 11:13 at night on a Thursday and he hasn’t received any phone calls all day, urgent or otherwise, there’s no good reason anyone should be standing at his apartment door right now, waiting for him to answer. The mystery behind a surprise door knock is always very threatening. Who knows who it could be? Until he opens the door, the person standing behind it is simultaneously a robber and a philanthropist, an axe murderer and the love of his life. He feels uneasy while he pads to the door on quiet feed, while he places his hand gingerly on the knob, but not uneasy enough to pretend he didn’t hear anybody knock. Curiosity alone demands he open it.

“Hey.” A voice is speaking before the door has opened all the way, and Mingyu recognizes it. It’s a soft voice, the kind that meets you in a dream and sometimes leaves you there, the kind that sounds so sweet even when the words burn. Mingyu thinks he’s ready to face those eyes, but when he actually looks into them, it still feels like a stack of bricks hitting him one by one, square in the center of his chest. He sighs.

Joshua has a certain air about him that makes it constantly seem like he’s just stepped out of a different plane of existence. It’s dark outside, but the darkness doesn’t touch him at all, nor does the passing evening breeze ruffle him. No matter what the light is like, he’s always colored in the same dewy shades, always outlined by a band of silver so thin it’s felt more than seen. That might just be the selective way Mingyu’s eyes choose to see things.

“You again,” Mingyu says, and Joshua smiles. It’s a tired smile, and it’s only after Mingyu notices how tired it is that he sees dark bags hanging beneath Joshua’s eyes, a careful slump to his shoulders. Still, he won’t be weak. “What is it this time?”

“Can I spend the night?” he asks. Of course. Mingyu knew before he said anything. He could have guessed as much almost before he opened the door, if he really wanted to think about it. But if he just welcomes Joshua inside without a word, that’ll make him seem too easy.

“What for now?”

“What’s it matter?” Joshua asks, frowning. He looks so wounded when he frowns. Mingyu can never tell if he’s just acting, and that makes things all the more dangerous.

“It matters because I can’t have you on my couch every other week.” The frown doesn’t waver, and Mingyu loathes the way it wears on his resolve. “This isn’t a bed and breakfast, you know? This is my home.”

“I know,” Joshua says, eyes glowing dimly, “but come on, Mingyu.” It’s a shame Mingyu is so invested in the way Joshua says his name, so gentle and smooth, like he’s trying to take care of it. “Just for a night.”

Mingyu looks at him hard, but he tries not to see too much. “It’s never just for a night.”

A tiny smile creeps back to Joshua’s lips, one that says he knows it’s true. “This time, I promise,” he says, holding a hand up and extending his pinky. He waits patiently for Mingyu to wrap his own pinky around it and squeeze. “If I try to stay for longer, kick me out.”

“I will,” Mingyu says, moving aside to let Joshua in, even though he knows he won’t do it. He couldn’t. Something in his heart is way too soft, and the more he thinks about it, he’s getting dangerously used to the sight of Joshua asleep on his couch.

 

The first time was four months ago. His roommate was always bringing guys over to fuck, so Joshua said, and it wasn’t so much that he had a problem with it as it was that he had a huge problem with it. He wanted to sleep, he said, and he would talk to Soonyoung about it soon, but just for the night. It helped that he knew Mingyu liked him a little too much, that he knew Mingyu was too naïve and tenderhearted to turn him away when he was so clearly in need. That time, he stayed for three days.

Every time after that, it was always a similar reason. Mingyu kept asking him why he wouldn’t just talk to Soonyoung, and Joshua kept saying that they’d been friends for so long and it was hard to bring up, that he just didn’t want to upset him, that he didn’t want to strain their friendship. He seemed just fine straining Mingyu’s couch, though. Even so, Mingyu didn’t push it. Joshua always seemed like the type to avoid fights, a little bit like a deer in perpetual headlights. It felt too cruel to demand answers. Anyway, he liked having Joshua around, even if only for a minute.

Last time he came, he stayed for nine days, and Mingyu is getting a nasty feeling that this stay will be even longer. He watches Joshua snuggle into the corner of the couch and drop a sturdy-looking bag on the floor with a hard thud, eyelids heavy. If he likes it here so much, he should start paying some of the rent already. Mingyu considers saying that, but knowing Joshua, he’d answer like it was a serious offer. And if he said he would, Mingyu would really be in a spot. It’s no good having someone you like this much leaning on you so heavily.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?” Joshua asks, gaze flicking lazily away from Family Feud to look up at Mingyu. Now that he’s inside, the bags aren’t standing out so much, but the light touches him so differently than it touches everything else.

“So now you’re ordering me around?” Mingyu huffs, falling to the cushion beside Joshua anyway. He’s careful about the distance between them—he has to be, for his own sake. If he’s not careful, things go south so quickly. Joshua doesn’t seem to care if things go south. He laughs a little bit and scoots a few inches nearer, away from the edge of the armrest.

“I just thought we could talk for a little bit,” he says.

“I don’t want to talk,” Mingyu sighs, “unless you’re gonna tell me why you haven’t talked to Soonyoung about this yet.”

“That’s so mean.”

“Isn’t it meaner of you to use me for my couch?” When you know how I feel about you, he doesn’t add.

For a while, Joshua doesn’t say anything. Mingyu wonders if maybe his tone was too harsh, if maybe he shouldn’t have been gentler, but he’s tired. He’s so tired. Joshua is an adult, after all, and he knows exactly what he’s doing, to himself, to Mingyu. Especially to Mingyu. In the short spell of silence, Mingyu commands himself not to feel bad about this, but he’s still too tender behind the ribs to listen to himself. It would be the worst thing to look over right now and see Joshua’s eyes shining.

“I guess,” he says eventually, slowly, words just breaths, warm on the air. Mingyu can feel it when Joshua’s gaze lands on him, but he keeps staring forward at Family Feud. “But, you know… you don’t think I’m just using you, right?” He sounds so innocent, so genuine, but still… There’s something else in that. Mingyu can never pin him down.

“I think you know that you are,” he says, quiet. He feels Joshua’s hand on his elbow, fingers curling to fit in the bend, palm large and warm and insistent on his skin.

“I’m not… Really, Mingyu, I—”

Mingyu stands up to keep from hearing any more. Just like sand sliding off a tilted plate of glass, Joshua’s hand falls from the crook of his elbow and lands helplessly on the couch. “I’m going to bed,” he says, terse. It’s everything not to look at Joshua’s expression, all the effort in the world and more. “Make yourself comfortable. You know where the blankets are.”

While he walks down the short hall, he listens to the sound of his own footsteps, quiet under the glaring hush of the TV’s low volume as the families on it rattle off comedically wrong answers. Splitting off, he goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, and while he does, he listens for the static click when the TV is turned off, the moving silence that sets in from outside. When he leaves to take those three short steps across the hall to his bedroom, Joshua will say something to him. He knows it even though he doesn’t want to. After he crosses the threshold, he makes it one and a half steps before he hears that voice call from the couch.

“Mingyu?” He always calls out, just like that. A child calling for mom one last time to say goodnight after being tucked in. The sound of Mingyu’s name in his voice is becoming so haunting lately.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for letting me stay over.” A short pause. Mingyu can almost hear him take a breath. “I mean it.”

It’s scary the way just hearing his voice can make Mingyu’s whole body freeze up. With all he has, he wants to take that final step and a half into his room, close the door tightly, pretend he’s not listening. He just wants to move already. Only one step and a few inches over, barely enough distance worth thinking about. It’s so awful to fall right before the finish line. He’s so tired of being stepped on. But Joshua really sounds sincere, and it makes his throat hurt.

“Sure.” No matter how much he wants to slam the door, he only ever manages to close it quietly.

 

After four days, Mingyu is beginning to wonder when he should say something. It’s not that he’s surprised—he knew from the beginning that it was never going to be one night only, just as well as Joshua knew it. Every time, he’s chipping away at the resolve Mingyu’s trying to build up. It needs to stop somewhere. If Mingyu wants to get anywhere in his life, it has to end sometime. Joshua stretches out like a cat does just before situating itself in a pool of sunlight, arms reaching toward the stars above his head, eyes closed tight. Mingyu’s iron will is less iron when he watches Joshua curl sideways on his side of the couch and feels a soft head nestle into his thigh.

“It’s been four days,” Mingyu says after a bit, low, hesitant. He tries his best not to sound like he’s angry. It’s less that he’s angry and more that he feels like he’s disintegrating from the inside.

“Has it?” Joshua asks, ignorance feigned. His eyes are forward when Mingyu looks down to watch his face, focused solely on the episode of Family Feud in front of them. This stupid show again.

“You said you would only stay for one night,” Mingyu reminds him instead of answering. There’s a small hush of breath that sounds half like laughter and half like nothing, and Joshua adjusts his head in its place.

“I guess I did say that,” he says, “but you also said you would kick me out.”

“And I should.” Should have already, he doesn’t say. Should have stopped letting you in months ago.

“So will you?”

Mingyu sighs. “That’s a cruel question.”

“How?”

“Because you know I won’t.” He leans back until the top of his head falls against the wall and stares at the ceiling. “You only tell me to kick you out because you know I would never do it.”

“That’s not true,” Joshua mutters, more to the cushions than to Mingyu. “I don’t know that. I think you would.”

“If I had the heart to do it, I would’ve done it by now.”

“So you won’t kick me out?” His tone is thick with a lot of things, and all of them are giving Mingyu a headache.

“That doesn’t mean I want you to stay.”

“So you want me to leave?” Now he sounds sad. It makes Mingyu’s head ache all the more.

“Stop being like this,” he says.

“Like what?” Joshua asks. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Difficult,” Mingyu tells him.

“What do you mean?”

“Difficult the way you’re being right now,” Mingyu groans. “Playing dumb. Acting like you don’t get it when you do. Pretending you don’t understand how I feel whenever it’s convenient for you not to know.”

“I… don’t do that.”

“And you’re still doing it,” Mingyu says. “You’re still doing it right now.”

“Mingyu, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I really don’t get it.”

“I’m not a doormat, Josh.” He weasels his hand now until it’s below Joshua’s neck, loops around behind his ear until he’s grabbed Joshua’s attention enough to make it easy when he pulls him upright. Up and up he comes, until he’s nose to nose with Mingyu, eyes wide, lips trembling just barely enough to see. “You can’t just walk all over me,” Mingyu whispers, gaze unmoving from the deepest parts of Joshua’s eyes, “and then pretend you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“But I don’t know,” Joshua whispers back. His breath tickles Mingyu’s lips.

“I’m telling you, you do.” It would be a horrible move to kiss him right now, and Mingyu hates the parts of him that want to try doing it anyway. For endless moments, they stay like that, waiting. Waiting for each other to crumble, maybe. Waiting for something to fall off the  shelf and shatter into infinite fractals of dust, waiting for the door to fall off its hinges or the window to crack. Waiting, always. Pushing his thumb forward into the softest part of Joshua’s cheek, Mingyu stands up and goes back to his bedroom.

 

Something in the air feels off from the moment Mingyu walks through his front door after getting home from work two days later. The TV is on like always, but today, it’s too loud somehow. He can hear after a moment that it’s Family Feud again, and he’s tired of this stupid show. It’s like everything else has forgotten how to come on anymore. When he wanders through to the small living room, even more is askew. Bottles sit on the coffee table, wine bottles, opened and emptied, and he recognizes them. All of them. Slowly, he approaches the table, reaches down to thumb at the labels. That’s for certain. These are straight out of his cabinet.

“You’re home,” a voice comes suddenly from beyond, small and slurred, and Mingyu looks up to see Joshua tiptoeing in from the hallway, cheeks pink and shirt strangely twisted around his torso. He tugs at the neck while he pads forward, and Mingyu can’t tell if it’s a weird force of nerves or he’s just feeling a bit too warm. “Welcome back.”

“What’s this?” Mingyu asks, gesturing to the bottles just below his hand. “You got into my wine cabinet, huh?”

The shy smile playing at Joshua’s lips melts away like butter spread on a hot roll, leaving no trace it was ever there. His cheeks wax even darker. “I didn’t, uh, I mean… I’m sorry.” His forehead wrinkles while he struggles for the right sentence, but the way his words run together is a sure sign he won’t be finding it any time soon. Step by shaky step, he closes the gap between them. “I’ll get you more.”

“Yeah, you will,” Mingyu tells him. As Joshua approaches, he only stands and watches. He could run, but there’s no point. It’s his house, after all. If he has to run from here, where else can he go? At long last, Joshua arrives, and he lays one palm flat over Mingyu’s shoulder, careless over how heavy it rests.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats meekly. His eyelashes lie in a gentle curve, catch the light like dew, and he looks misty beneath them. His lips sit in a timid line that verges on pouting, cheeks tightened against the cold. His hand is so warm it burns. Mingyu can’t look at him without feeling like heaving.

“Why?” he asks, careful not to breathe too much. He can smell the wine coming off Joshua’s tongue, and he doesn’t want the scent getting to his head. “Are you a toddler I have to watch to make sure doesn’t get into my things? That’s my stuff, you know.” Though he speaks, it doesn’t seem like Joshua is taking anything in. Mingyu heaves a sigh. “I just don’t get what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua repeats. “I didn’t mean to.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t mean to?” Joshua’s hand tenses at the way Mingyu’s tone shifts, clutches his shoulder tight for leverage. “You’re an adult, you know? How could you have not meant to raid my liquor cabinet? I mean,” he breathes out, “I know I’ve been letting you overstay your welcome, but don’t you think this is too much?”

“I just wanted—I didn’t mean—I thought if it was one glass, but I—”

“This isn’t your house, Josh!” In Mingyu’s mind, he’s yelling this louder, but it’s so hard to get mad enough when Joshua looks like a few words in the wrong tone will turn him to dust. As much as Mingyu wishes he could, he still can’t stand to see him wilt. “It’s my house, you know? What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua tells him, and his free hand grapples its way to Mingyu’s other shoulder, as if he could somehow hold him in place. If Mingyu wanted to move, he still could. He does want to. But he just doesn’t. “I don’t know, Mingyu. I’m sorry.”

For a while, Mingyu just looks at him, jaw tensing, relaxing, tensing again. “You have to leave,” he says. Joshua’s hands on his shoulders stiffen like they want to move, but his eyes search Mingyu’s face restlessly, unsure where to move them.

“You’re kicking me out?” His voice is so small, so fragile, and Mingyu wants to take it back, but he has to be strong enough not to. It’s about time he proves to himself that he has a spine.

“Yes,” he says through clenched teeth. Joshua’s hands are trembling, then still, then gripping, then limp. When Mingyu looks in his eyes, he thinks he might fall apart.

“I’m sorry, Mingyu,” Joshua says, and his voice is even tinier. Don’t cry, Mingyu wants to tell him, but his throat is dry. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He opens his mouth, but chokes on something invisible, and it’s only after he gulps hard that he’s able to whisper, “Please don’t make me leave.”

“Why?” Now is Mingyu’s turn to grip, hands hard just behind Joshua’s elbows. Even though he holds on, the sensation tells him nothing. “You have to go back to your place. You have to talk to Soonyoung.” Though their eyes meet, it still feels like they can’t see each other. In front of him, Joshua is nothing but a wash of watercolor, completely separate from this universe. “I’m tired of doing this, Josh.”

“But I want to stay here with you,” he says, neither slow nor quick, forceful nor timid. The words weigh so much on Mingyu’s lungs that for deathly long, he can’t manage to say anything back.

“Don’t be stupid,” he ends up with.

Joshua swallows hard again, finally releases Mingyu’s shoulders. “I messed up, huh?” he says, and though he pulls himself from Mingyu’s grip, he doesn’t leave like he ought to. Instead, he goes to fall to the couch cushions, back slumped dangerously forward. His head almost presses into his knees. “I messed up,” he repeats, dragging his hands through his hair, resting them over his ears. “I messed up. I really messed it up.”

After a few painful moments of watching him, Mingyu sits down beside him on the couch. He isn’t sure what else he ought to do. This is his place, so he can’t leave, and even though he wants Joshua to know how much this is killing him, it still hurts to see him hurting. Against all his better instincts, it hurts so much.

“Josh,” he says softly. Nothing else will come out. Slowly, intently, he lifts one hand to place on Joshua’s shoulder. Somehow, it feels like he might break apart, erode into dust, blow off in the wind like nothing.

“What can I do?” Joshua whispers, barely audible. “What can I do? What can I do?” He asks it so many times it loses its meaning, sounds like white noise rather than words. Eons later, he turns to look Mingyu in the eyes, his own watery and stained pink around their edges, like fragmented glass in church windows. “What can I do?” he asks again.

“You have to go home,” Mingyu tells him, quiet, and a few tears squeeze boiling from Joshua’s eyes, run down to his chin.

“But I want to stay here,” Joshua says. “I want to be with you. What can I do?”

“Josh.”

“I like you so much,” he continues. It’s a sudden thing to say, Mingyu thinks, but it doesn’t feel so sudden. It feels like the top step of the staircase you always knew you would reach, only ten steps earlier than you thought you would get there, a hundred steps before you realized you were climbing. Joshua’s eyes harden in earnest, but the wetness in them blossoms until the tears lying in wait can no longer be dammed. “I like you so much, Mingyu,” he says, lines streaking down to drip off his chin. “I like you so much.”

“This isn’t fair,” Mingyu says, though his heart has fled from his chest already. There is so much emptiness in a feeling this whole. “You can’t do this to me.”

“I know,” Joshua says. “I know. I’m awful. I’m so awful.” He resumes that ceaseless task of running hands through his hair, behind his ears, trying to thread needles that aren’t there. Mingyu wishes he would just be still. “But I don’t know what to do. I really…I don’t know. I thought if I could just stay close enough…”

“That you could keep me from moving on?” Mingyu finishes. Joshua stops running his hands through his hair and looks over quickly, searches Mingyu’s face. There’s a rawness wrought along the lines of his cheeks that makes Mingyu’s bones ache.

“That makes me sound so terrible,” he mutters, and his hands clench into fists beside his face, snatching at hair in the process. “Maybe I am terrible.” As he speaks, a sad excuse for a smile finds its way to his lips, trembles in place. “That’s right, huh? I’m terrible.” His shoulders start to shake, just barely, the perfect middle ground between subdued laughter and sobs. “I just wanted you to keep liking me.”

“And do what?” Mingyu asks, throat tight. Silence alone answers him. “This isn’t how you like someone, Josh. By using them. Showing up whenever you want, doing whatever.”

“I don’t want to get hurt,” Joshua tells him, voice wavering on the air, so very quiet the sounds whisper in from the black depths of empty space. Brittle as the first layer of ice that spreads across a pond on an early winter morning.

“But you’re hurting me,” Mingyu says, and when Joshua looks at him again, his eyes are deep enough to drown in, deep enough to sink down and never come out on the other side. They say he already knew that, that he never knew it, that no matter what he does he can’t figure out how to stop. Once again, just like they had when he first knocked on the door, those eyes look so tired.

“What should I do?”

Mingyu looks at him for a long time trying to figure it out. Inside his body, his bones are seconds from decaying into nothing. “You should go home,” he says.

“Do you hate me now?” Joshua asks, pushing closer. Dew rests along his eyelashes, perfect drops that threaten to fall. “Did I make you hate me?” Mingyu hesitates just long enough for his face to crack. Joshua looks back at the floor. “It’s my fault.”

“I don’t,” Mingyu manages after a while. Joshua remains tense beneath his palm.

“What should I do?”

“Be honest,” Mingyu tells him this time.

“Honest how?”

“Just honest.”

For a long time, Joshua only looks at him. “I like you so much,” he repeats at last, throat sounding sore, words scraping along the insides of Mingyu’s ears with the kind of sting he can’t help but lean into. “I really do. I really do.”

“If you really like me,” Mingyu says, “you’ll go home. And you’ll talk to Soonyoung.”

“And then what?”

The soft sounds of Family Feud filter through the air, only just now reminding Mingyu it’s still playing on the television. He hates this show, really. The noise, the needless shouting. There’s nothing to celebrate right now, but he can hear the crowd laughing, cheering, mindless and ignorant. Joshua evades the impact of that noise just barely, nighttime light coming in from the uncovered window on the far wall nowhere close to touching him. Mingyu breathes out.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“After I talk to him,” Joshua says, “can I come back to you?”

Mingyu’s heart is too soft. He can already hear the knock on the door, already feel the floor creak under his feet as he walks to answer it. Outside, like always, Joshua will be standing there, bright against the evening light, softly blooming from the navy darkness. Mingyu will want to kiss him against his better instincts. By now, he should know it’s a bad idea. Maybe if Joshua finally sorts everything out, though, it won’t be so bad. Maybe they still have enough bricks between them to build a bridge from where they are now to get somewhere else. He hopes they will. It’s a nice thought, to think they can make it somewhere else down the road, a place both of them want to be. He’d still like to try going.

For now, though, it’s too early to swallow so much hope. Mingyu sets his eyes, firm and cold, and he resists the soft touch his hand yearns for over Joshua’s shoulder. “I won’t let you stay again,” he says, eyeing Joshua carefully, wondering himself if it’s even true. Joshua hangs onto his breaths like he’s running out of them, face dampening beneath the fluorescent bulb of the ceiling.

“You won’t?” he asks, impossibly quiet.

“No,” Mingyu declares despite the way his eyes gather mist, the way his ribs start to crack. He sighs, and for one second, all the world is silent. Wind touches him through the cracks at the bottom of the window with hands that don’t feel, pushes him timidly forward. Baby steps. “But I will open the door.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! i know the nature of this fic goes pretty hard against my happy brand but uh oh well... sometimes you have ideas that are sad. life is sad. we deal with it and roll wherever writing takes us!! i hope you were able to enjoy this anyway :-) originally i was writing something else, but then i was struck with inspiration to write this instead, so now you're stuck with it. i'll probably finish that other idea sometime though, so don't despair. or do. i physically am unable to stop you. of course, thank you once again for taking the time to read, and thanks to the mods for putting on this lovely fest for sweet boys minshua (even tho i was late lmao)!!! the two sweet lovely boys deserve so much more than they get and also so much better than what i just put them through. i'm sorry guys. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated, and thanks so much again for reading! i really do hope you enjoyed!


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